Sanchez Art Center is proud to present the sculptures of Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor and the paintings of Livia C. Stein in "Cautionary Tales Reconsidered," which opened Friday, Jan. 10. It is a "reconsideration" of their joint exhibit at The Transmission Gallery titled "Cautionary Tales" (December 7, 2012—January 19, 2013). Cameron Brian and Ruth Santee, owners/directors of The Transmission Gallery in Oakland, curated the Sanchez Art Center exhibition. The artists and curators will give a talk about the work and the exhibit at 4 p.m. on closing day, Sunday, Feb. 9.

Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor uses discarded materials, including bed sheets and blankets from thrift stores, old boxes, and all kinds of connecting substances and hardware, including, for instance, glue, paint, and drywall screws, to create large figures that manage to be both endearing and troubling. The artist says she is fascinated with "the undernoticed yet overwhelming, the marginal yet monumental." Her larger-than-life-sized figures reach into your heart with their sometimes playful, sometimes pitiful, ragged appearance, while at the same time making you feel slightly threatened by their size and unpredictability.

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O'Connor earned her MFA from University of California at Davis and currently teaches at Sierra College in Rocklin, California. She has exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art, the Torrance Art Museum, the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, and the Kohler Company Space in Kohler, Wisconsin.

Painter Livia C. Stein's artworks are a perfect complement to O'Connor's mixed-media sculptures. Stein paints with oils and ink, does pastel and charcoal drawing and printmaking (monotypes), and also works with mixed media and clay. In "Cautionary Tales Reconsidered," brilliant colors predominate in her paintings and drawings, yet there is also a delicacy of line that adds nuance and texture. Stein's oil painting "Orange Crocodile Interacts with Man's Nose" brings in the animal element often found in cautionary tales, and a sense of confrontation and not knowing what will happen next. Stein says of her process that it's "like jumping off a cliff but gradually knowing one has the skills to land softly and surely. The experience of jumping and doing the work is what matters."

Stein received her MA from San Francisco State in an innovative experimental art program founded by Jock Reynolds, now director of the Yale University Art Gallery. She currently is a faculty member at Dominican University in San Rafael. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in many public and private collections, among them the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the University of Iowa Art Museum.

Running concurrently, in the West Gallery, the Art Guild of Pacifica presents a group show entitled "Wishes Are Dreams." Members (and non-members) may enter any works that connect, however loosely, to the theme of wishes and dreams. This theme includes anything from simple daydreaming to the archetypal images that occur in "big dreams."

The East Gallery honors the award winners from the 2013 Fog Fest Photography Contest, which was run again this year by the Sanchez Art Center and judged by previous award winners Alan Grinberg and Edwin Hacking.

All three galleries are open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. through the exhibits' closing day, Feb. 9. Sanchez Art Center is located at 1220 Linda Mar Blvd. For more information, call 650-355-1894 or visit www.sanchezartcenter.org.